Some phrases sound careful.

As far as I can recall. To the best of my knowledge. I believe that's correct.

What they actually sound like, to someone trained to listen, is a door being quietly locked from the inside.

As Far As I Can Recall is a podcast about language, truth, and deception. Thirteen years of operational policing across Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, and British Transport Police. Time in CID. Rehabilitation work with men serving custodial sentences. A linguistics degree.

What all of that gives you, eventually, is the ability to hear the gap between what someone says and what they mean.

This podcast is about what lives in that gap.

New episodes from 28 May 2026. Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major platforms.

Follow on X: @AFAICRpodcast

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There is a difference between someone telling the truth and someone managing it.

It lives in the words they choose. The qualifications that create wiggle room. The sentences where the person disappears from their own account. The cooperative witness who knows too much about what you need before you have asked for it.

Thirteen years of operational policing teaches you to hear that difference. A linguistics degree gives you the language to explain it.

This is episode one.

What deceptive language actually sounds like. Why the brain produces it without the person deciding to. And what it means once you can hear it everywhere.

Which you will.

Follow on X: @AFAICRpodcast

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There is a script for grief.

We all know it. We have seen it enough times to know what loss is supposed to look like.

The problem is that grief does not look one way. It looks like everything. And one of the things it looks like is also what guilt looks like.

Calm, in a room where you would expect devastation, is information. It is just not the information most people assume it is.

This episode is about the absence of expected emotion. What flat affect actually means, what causes it, and why reaching for it too quickly as an explanation is one of the most dangerous things an investigator can do.

It is also about a woman called Margaret. And six words she said, about forty minutes in, that told me everything I needed to know.

Not about the case.

About forty years of a person.

Follow on X: @AFAICRpodcast

Support via Patreon